As electronic messaging has become commonplace with the advent of the Internet in recent years, many institutions, such as prisons, nursing homes, mental institutions, etc., have the need to offer inmates or residents controlled electronic messaging exchange access. Common forms of interaction for inmates and residents with external parties include such mediums as site visits and telephonic communication. While both of these methods can be useful, electronic messaging can prove to be more effective and provides an alternative to the aforementioned mediums. For the purposes of simplicity, discussion will be limited to inmates within a correctional facility, but the discussion can easily be expanded to include residents of other institutions.
Site visits from an inmate's family, attorney, etc. are often not economically or physically possible. The inability of visitors to make site visits to the inmate results from such factors as the distance from and costs incurred to travel to the institution. In addition, it is costly and difficult for some institutions to provide monitoring and security for the visitors and inmates. As a result, an alternative method is necessary to allow controlled inmate communication with external parties.
An alternative to site visits, telephonic communication, poses other problems. Some visitors may be several time zones away from the penal institution making telephonic communication difficult and even prohibitive. Additionally, telephonic communication between external parties and inmates can prove expensive. There are two common methods of payment available to inmates. In the first method, a collect call is placed to an acceptable outside party. In the second method, an inmate has an account in which money is deposited from a variety of sources and for each phone call; the cost of the call is then deducted from the account balance. The costs vary as a result of, inter alia, different service providers for different facilities. Usually the institutions contract a service provider to install, operate and maintain the facility's system. As a result, costs for calls within the penal institution are generally much more than for similar calls made outside of the institution.
From the standpoint of the institution, inmate telephone usage can prove expensive, as it is necessary to monitor and record the activities of each of the residents in order to properly charge each individual caller for his or her outgoing calls. There are three common methods for monitoring telephone calls: live monitoring, passive monitoring and monitoring via a standard recording device. One such system known in the art provides a computer-based telecommunication system for the purpose of allowing an institution to control, monitor, record and report usage and access to a telephone network. In addition, the institution controls whom the inmate can or cannot call.
Electronic messaging, such as emailing and instant messaging, has become prominent in recent years as a medium of information transfer. While there is good reason to provide inmates with electronic messaging access, there is also a necessity to control the inmate's access to sending and receiving electronic messages. There have been instances where email has been banned from prisons, even when received via a printed form, resulting from, inter alia, a lack of secure control methods. System control is necessary to prevent harassing messages to outside parties, to prevent fraudulent activities, etc. Therefore, systems in such environments must monitor and control the electronic messaging activity of each inmate. Systems should also have a means of maintaining electronic messaging records for each inmate. The system should include a means for communicating with emailed parties to enable the contacted parties to prevent future emails from inmates. The same holds true for instant messaging. In short, the communications system used in a regulated institution must employ unique monitoring and control functions often unnecessary in other types of electronic messaging exchange systems. Further, an exchange system in institutions should reduce the workload burden of the correctional facility while provide security through intelligence gathering capabilities.
In order for the methods of monitoring and control to be effective, it is important to prevent inmates from exploiting any loop-holes that can be used to bypass the control features of the system. This control is vital to ensure that the inmate does not access blocked addresses, for example, to perpetrate additional criminal activities or harass certain parties.
An electronic messaging system with restricted access should be able to perform the same functions as a normal electronic messaging system. The system should provide keyword scans, translation, file preparation, encryption, control over sent and received electronic messages to and from external sources, a billing method, etc. While there are systems that provide for some of these features, there is no system that provides a comprehensive solution for electronic messaging in a correctional facility. The present invention encompasses all the elements into a single system enabling a secure electronic messaging system to be utilized in penal institutions.
For example, systems are known in the art that filter unwanted, bulk, or junk emails, commonly referred to as “spam”. The filtering can be done by a variety of methods including: sender address, sender organization, recipient address, recipient organization, attachment type, and email message content type. Each of these filtering types can be used in order to reduce “spam”. The emails that pass the filtering process are then sent to a recipient or recipients. Potential “spam” is then stored in a separate location, where it is examined by either the potential recipient or a third party. If determined to be “spam”, it is deleted or moved to another folder. Another possibility is to have the potential “spam” automatically deleted without verification by a party.
A different system provides a methodology for a computerized telecommunications system for voice to text message storage for use in correctional facilities. This system receives an external message via either voice or text. There are two storage means: a voice message box or an email inbox. If a voice message is received, it passes as a regular telephonic voice message is then stored as a voice message in the voice message box. If instead, the storage unit is an email box and a voice message is received, the voice message is converted to text and the message is then saved. The reverse happens if the message is a text message and the storage medium is a voice message box. If a text message is received and the inmate has an email in box, then the text message is saved as text. The inmate is then notified of the new message. This system can also allow the inmate to send either a text or a voice message to an external party. If it is a voice message, then no conversion occurs and the message is sent. However, if an inmate's message is in the form of text, then either a text to voice conversion occurs before being sent to the outside party or the text message is sent via email to the external party. The invention is limited in the fact that it can only handle email or voice messages.
Yet another system known in the art provides a system and method for providing a sponsored or universal telecommunications service and third party payer services. The system discloses a method for providing a service for a sponsor to pay for communication via voice, data or multi-media services, on the behalf of others. The method further provides universal service for telecommunication voice and multimedia applications without tax or market subsidies.
In the view of the foregoing, a need exists for an inclusive method for allowing inmates access to electronic messaging systems. The present invention provides an alternative to site visits, telephonic and other forms of communication. It also offers a secure method for using electronic messages within a correctional or similar institution, including such features as monitoring, controlling, archiving and billing.